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Reading a Mac HD on Windows- Suggestions?

McGyverMcGyver Posts: 7,085
edited March 2017 in The Commons

EDITED BECAUSE I'M AN IDIOT AND CAN'T REMEMBER FORMAT NAMES PROPERLY... 

Recently I've decided to take all my old Mac hard drives and transfer anything of value, God forbid my old Mac dies... Apparently I was under the mistaken impression that all the years I've been formatting my "files only" drives (not time machine or OS backups, just files I don't want taking up space)... in exFAT But my Windows machine won't read any of them... I was positive, or at least really sure I saved in a compatible format, but I guess not... 

So I've spent a lot of time transferring stuff to flash drives and shuttling it back to the PC... Then I got the brilliant idea... "Hey, stupid... I wonder if there's some driver or software that can read Native Mac formatted drives on Windows?"

And what do you know... There is... But most of the articles are either really old or assuming I have Java installed and want to use the free driver... One program that gets mentioned a lot is Paragon HFS, but that seems like it's for Windows 11 already (11? Really? Didn't Microsoft just get done bludgeoning us with 10?)...

Any suggestions or experiences (or clever commentary) with this are welcomed and appreciated... I'm hoping for cheap solutions, since I just spent $40 on two flash drives I didn't really need...

Thanks in advance!

SORRY FOR REALLY MUCKING UP THAT QUESTION BY MISNAMING EVERYTHING...

Post edited by McGyver on

Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 108,079

    NTFS is a Windows format, that's what I am using. I think it came in with Windows NT and should be readable by any recent, or even ancient, version of Widnows post Windows Me.

  • StratDragonStratDragon Posts: 3,273
    edited March 2017
    McGyver said:

    I guess I recently decided I'm never going back to Mac unless they have some major shift in where they are going... Fat chance in that...

    So recently I've decided to take all my old Mac hard drives and transfer anything of value, God forbid my old Mac dies... Apparently I was under the mistaken impression that all the years I've been formatting the drives in Fat32... But my Windows machine won't read any of them... I was positive, or at least really sure I saved NTFS or whatever the non-Fat32 format is, for time machine or full OS and everything back up... But HDs for just files I formatted in Fat32... But none of the drives work on the PC... On the Mac they are all fine...

    So I've spent a lot of time transferring stuff to flash drives and shuttling it back to the PC... Then I got the brilliant idea... "Hey, stupid is there some driver or software that can read NTFS on Windows?"

    And what do you know... There is... But most of the articles are either really old or assuming I have Java installed and want to use the free driver... One program that get mentioned a lot is Paragon HFS, but that seems like it's for Windows 11 already (11? Really? Didn't Microsoft just get done bludgeoning us with 10?)...

    Any suggestions or experiences (or clever commentary) with this are welcomed and appreciated... I'm hoping for cheap solutions, since I just spent $40 on two flash drives I didn't really need...

    Thanks in advance!

    NTFS is Windows Next Technology File System developed at the time of Windows NT 3.1. OS X (all versions) will by default read but not write or delete (R/-/-) to it as a protection to bootcamp. FAT32 and ExFAT are read, write and delete able in OS X (R/W/X). Paragon and Tuxera will allow Mac OS to delete and write to an NTFS volume but they don't always update their software for the latest iteration of OS X despite having months of heads up from Apple. All three of these formats do not support Mac permissions and should not be used in OS X unless you have to use them directly with Windows systems as well. Mac Extended (Journaled) is the preferred format for OS X, it is unreadable in Windows without 3rd party software.

    This is why you don't see my on these forums much any more, I'm on the Mac forums all day, I'm like the Punisher, dropping Apple knowledge instead of grenades... or balloons filled with pee.
    He did that too.

    Post edited by StratDragon on
  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,587

    Are your computers networked? I simply share the hard drives on my Mac, and map them as a network drive on the PC. Works like a charm.

  • FrankTheTankFrankTheTank Posts: 1,481

    There's a program called "HFS Explorer" that I used when I needed to access my old mac drives when I moved from mac to windows last year.

    http://www.catacombae.org/hfsexplorer/

  • McGyverMcGyver Posts: 7,085

     

    TangoAlpha said:

    Are your computers networked? I simply share the hard drives on my Mac, and map them as a network drive on the PC. Works like a charm.

    Actually, they weren't, but they may now be... Seeing your post I decided to try again and it seems I may have the Mac connected to the PC (I can access it from the Mac)... But for some reason I can't see the Mac on the PC... But I've dropped a few folders over onto it (the PC) and it seems to be working...

    Previously I had tried it following some directions but it was one side PC only directions... I found different directions which were more detailed and now it seems to be working.

  • McGyverMcGyver Posts: 7,085
    DvoraszeniaStudios said:

    There's a program called "HFS Explorer" that I used when I needed to access my old mac drives when I moved from mac to windows last year.

    http://www.catacombae.org/hfsexplorer/

    I think I might try that if the networking fails. Thank you

  • McGyverMcGyver Posts: 7,085
    Richard Haseltine said:

    NTFS is a Windows format, that's what I am using. I think it came in with Windows NT and should be readable by any recent, or even ancient, version of Widnows post Windows Me.

    Yeah, I may as well have been drunk when I wrote that... Too much distraction going on around me when I wrote that... I fixed it now, but I totally screwed up my question with the wrong format names.

    Thank you.

  • McGyverMcGyver Posts: 7,085
    StratDragon said:
    McGyver said:

    I guess I recently decided I'm never going back to Mac unless they have some major shift in where they are going... Fat chance in that...

    So recently I've decided to take all my old Mac hard drives and transfer anything of value, God forbid my old Mac dies... Apparently I was under the mistaken impression that all the years I've been formatting the drives in Fat32... But my Windows machine won't read any of them... I was positive, or at least really sure I saved NTFS or whatever the non-Fat32 format is, for time machine or full OS and everything back up... But HDs for just files I formatted in Fat32... But none of the drives work on the PC... On the Mac they are all fine...

    So I've spent a lot of time transferring stuff to flash drives and shuttling it back to the PC... Then I got the brilliant idea... "Hey, stupid is there some driver or software that can read NTFS on Windows?"

    And what do you know... There is... But most of the articles are either really old or assuming I have Java installed and want to use the free driver... One program that get mentioned a lot is Paragon HFS, but that seems like it's for Windows 11 already (11? Really? Didn't Microsoft just get done bludgeoning us with 10?)...

    Any suggestions or experiences (or clever commentary) with this are welcomed and appreciated... I'm hoping for cheap solutions, since I just spent $40 on two flash drives I didn't really need...

    Thanks in advance!

    NTFS is Windows Next Technology File System developed at the time of Windows NT 3.1. OS X (all versions) will by default read but not write or delete (R/-/-) to it as a protection to bootcamp. FAT32 and ExFAT are read, write and delete able in OS X (R/W/X). Paragon and Tuxera will allow Mac OS to delete and write to an NTFS volume but they don't always update their software for the latest iteration of OS X despite having months of heads up from Apple. All three of these formats do not support Mac permissions and should not be used in OS X unless you have to use them directly with Windows systems as well. Mac Extended (Journaled) is the preferred format for OS X, it is unreadable in Windows without 3rd party software.

    This is why you don't see my on these forums much any more, I'm on the Mac forums all day, I'm like the Punisher, dropping Apple knowledge instead of grenades... or balloons filled with pee.
    He did that too.

    Pee balloons... Hmmm I knew saving barrels of pee would pay off.  Now I've got something to do this weekend.

    I was wondering why your avatar wasn't showing up much lately.

    Thanks for the info!

  • FrankTheTankFrankTheTank Posts: 1,481

    BY the way, you'll probably want to use the "robocopy" command  to copy the files over from your mac to pc, it saved me a lot of grief trying to copy files over from mac to pc across the network when dealing with incompatible naming conventions, hiccups in the network, names too long, etc. Robocopy will handle it all with no problem. (It stand for robust copy, its a command line utility for batch copying in windows if you're not familiar with it.)

  • ScavengerScavenger Posts: 2,674

    The windows native format is NTFS

    Mac native is HFS+

    FAT32 is a cross compatable format most flash drives come in.

    exFAT should be cross compatable, but note the SHOULD. I've seen windows systems not supporting it. I don't use it for that reason, but a quick googling tells me it should be just fine on Win10, which is what I'm assuming you have, but it isn't clear. If you're on 7 or earlier, that's a different fish kettle.

    I use MediaFour's MacDrive (http://www.mediafour.com/software/macdrive/) on my windows box so it can read my mac HFS+ drives. Used it for years in xP and 7. It has a 5 day free trial, that you may wish to partake of.

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